Page 9 of Rise of the Gods: Vardor’s Destiny (Time for Monsters)

T he battle was epic and raged for two days. It was everything my warrior heart desired. The salted ground beneath our feet turned red with the blood of our enemies. The men around me were exhausted, but I used my powers to rally them again and again, just like Maezharr did with his.

Seven thousand warriors died in those two days and two nights. Their names would be sung in all eternity as they returned to their makers—a land that would forever be closed to me.

On the morning of the third day, Maezharr turned, leaving his remaining men behind to be slaughtered by mine. I pursued him for as long as I could, but the cunning coward burrowed into the sands of the desert that was slowly closing in on Orasis. As much as it irked me that he had escaped yet again, it was time to return and free Vaelora from her prison.

Asharat was just about to haul in the anchor when I arrived.

"Vardor, it is good to see you," he jumped off the ship and strode toward me, embracing me. His not using my formal address showed just how happy he was to see me.

I ordered the crate with Vaelora to be brought to our secret temple. I wanted to set her free in private, aware of the rage she would unleash on me. It was not something mortals should witness. It might be good for them to realize that they had to fear her too, but this wasn't the time for it.

"How dare you!" she fumed the moment I took the lock off. "You betrayed me!"

"I had to keep you safe," I said, kneeling by her feet, awaiting her killing blow. "Maezharr's armies were defeated, but the coward escaped." I filled her in on the necessities.

"You broke my trust," she screamed. I dared a glimpse up at her, and my heart nearly broke at the sight of her contorted face. It wasn't just from anger, that I could have dealt with, but there was grief.

"I'm sorry, my goddess. I only acted to protect you. You know I would never move against you otherwise."

"Do I?" She yelled in my face. "How do I know that? I can't trust you ever again."

She paced the room, "By the starlight, Vardor, I should kill you."

"My life is in your hands," I offered her my sword on outstretched hands. She moved to grab it, her hands shaking in barely contained fury. I had never seen her this out of sorts, and I was sorry for that. But I would never be sorry for keeping her safe. Never that.

She raised the sword and I lowered my head, expecting my head to roll. Would I finally be with my family again? Would I enter the afterlife like they had? Where did gods go when they died?

The shattering of the sword against the wall startled me. I lifted my head. Vaelora stood over me like a vision—so beautiful and ethereal even in her wrath. Her entire body shook as she stared at me; her eyes shone as if filled with tears. But that couldn't be; gods didn't cry.

"You leave me no choice, Vardor. Guards," she yelled. "I will not have you executed. I might regret that." A small smile curled the corners of my lips. My Vaelora, her mind was always composed, even in the midst of rage. "But I can't stand the sight of you, and you must be punished. Nobody is allowed to go against my will. Not even you."

"I will take willingly whatever punishment you see fit, my goddess," I said, holding out my hands to indicate to the guards that I would follow them willingly. None of them, not even Vaelora, would have been able to remove me otherwise.

"Your body will be mummified, and you will be buried alive to await my pleasure," Vaelora announced the next day at the steps of the main temple of Orasis. What was left of my army was assembled below, as were the jubilant citizens. For them, the war was over, and it was time to rebuild. My warriors, however, looked ready to fight for me like they had always done. I couldn't have that. With my hands bound before me, I stepped forward to the end of the terrace, overlooking the courtyard.

"I am willingly taking my punishment for defying my goddess. I will be awaiting her mercy at the time she chooses. Each of you fought bravely at my side, and I hope you will accept Asharat as your new leader."

Asharat stood to the side. I took it as a good sign that Vaelora hadn't ordered him executed.

"My lord, no," Asharat protested.

"Do this last favor for me, old friend. The troops will be loyal to you, and I know it. Protect our goddess with your life."

Asharat looked stricken, but he was a good man. He would serve Vaelora for the rest of his life and keep her lands safe.

With a nod, I turned to walk into the temple's bowels to endure my punishment. A solemn drumming sound followed me down: my soldiers, banging their swords against their crests in my honor.

I walked all the way through the temple, down into the lower level where the dead were prepared for their eternal rest. I might have been a god, but I felt pain like a mortal when they prepared me like every other dead body. After many agonizing hours, it was only my soul trapped in a husk that was still alive. My heart had been removed, along with my brain and my other organs. All blood had been drained from me, and I was soaked in salt. Thankfully, at this point, I didn't feel anything any longer, only the pain in my soul from not being with Vaelora.

Time passed, I didn’t know how much, and then I heard her voice.

"Hear me, Vardor. You will sleep now. The sleep of the eternal, only awoken when I speak to you. In my infinite mercy, I will not allow your mind to wither in your prison, unlike what you had planned for me."

There was no way to contradict her, to make her understand that I never planned on keeping her my prisoner. Her mind was made up and wouldn't change for a long time, if ever. That much I knew of my Vaelora.

"You will dream of me and our time together. You will dream of me in our secret Orasis, where I will live from now on. You will ponder your erroneous ways until I awaken you."

My soul watched as she placed her black pearl ring with me into the coffin. I would have smiled if I could have. My Vaelora, she was giving up her most priceless possession to keep me company, her ring of power. I had always known that in her own way, she loved me too, but this was proof.

The heavy lid of the sarcophagus closed me into total darkness, and I began dreaming, just like she had ordered me. I dreamed of her—of us. And it was glorious.

This time you need to awaken me .

Her words still echoed in my mind when I finally found the strength to stretch underneath the bandages, ripping them. I didn't know what she meant with her words, but I was certain I would figure it out. First though, I needed to regain my strength. Needed to rebuild my body.

Six months later

I had scoured every nook and cranny of this strange place and concluded I was in some kind of storage chamber, a tomb not for the dead but for forgotten things. Stacked wooden crates loomed like burial stones, their surfaces stamped with symbols. Not the sacred runes of gods or kings, but something crude, something mortal. Things lay scattered about, strange and unfamiliar—metal cylinders with long, slender necks, their surfaces dull with dust, and what looked like weapons, but not swords or spears. One had a wooden stock and a long, darkened barrel, its design alien yet unmistakably meant for war. Clothing, too, was draped over crates—coats of thick fabric, with brass buttons glinting in the dim light, and trousers stitched in a style unlike anything I had ever seen. In the corner, a peculiar contraption with a wide, blackened horn and a crank handle stood silent, like some mechanical beast waiting to be roused. A dull hum vibrated through the walls unlike any pulse of power I had ever known, steady and lifeless. Overhead, a dim glow emanated from within a glass orb encased in metal like a trapped star; its flame flickered unnaturally, but it was the only source of light in this vast space. The air was thick with dust, but beneath it, I detected hints of something sharp—oil, metal, soot. The floor was smooth and cold beneath my toes, as though the stone had been tamed and polished into submission. I sat up, the stiffness of millennia cracking through my limbs, and listened—to the distant murmur of voices above me, the clatter of unseen contraptions, and the steady, rhythmic pounding of something vast, something moving beyond these walls. The world had changed, and I did not yet know if it would recognize me—or if I would recognize it.

Every once in a while, someone would come down a long set of stairs, bringing or taking unknown artifacts. Sometimes, when they brought or took heavier objects, it was two or three men talking in a strange tongue. I was a god, so any language spoken I knew, but still… Some of their words made no sense to me: musket, gramophone, gaslight, to name a few.

While I worked on regaining my strength, I discovered books bound and written on the thinnest paper I had ever seen. Written by such skilled hands that every repeating letter looked the same. Even the way they were arranged in even spaces was magnificent.

The first book that grabbed my attention was called The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . Empires rose and fell all the time, but still, it was quite fascinating. Another was A New System of Modern Geography , laying out maps of continents I had never seen or heard of. Nothing looked familiar to me, and I was beginning to wonder if I was even still on Earth. But then my attention caught on the name of a river: Nile. Was it the same Nile as Orasis had been built by? Familiar mountains were drawn, but large, triangular structures were nothing like... except... hadn't Vaelora talked about something like that? What had she called it? A pyramid? Yes, that sounded right. Had she finally had them built? I remembered the scorched and salted Earth after the last battle. Had the desert taken over all of our splendor?

The Age of Reason made me laugh. A man named Thomas Paine criticized organized religion. Words like Bible and Christian were foreign to me, so I hunted for a book called Bible next.

The more I read, the more I realized how long ten thousand years truly were. Vaelora's wrath seemed eternal. Vengeful deity , I grinned. I couldn't wait to see her again, to physically hold her. I had enjoyed my dreams, but they were nothing compared to holding her in my arms, to feeling her warm body pressed to mine.

To pass the time, I read more, finding it a quite enjoyable form of entertainment.

Reading Frankenstein made me wonder about myself. Was I like Frankenstein's monster? No, I decided. The monster didn't have feelings; I did. Still, it was an entertaining book.

The next book I picked was thin by my standards, its pages rough beneath my fingertips, yet its weight in my hands felt heavier than the stone tablets of my forgotten temple. Zoonomia, it was called—written by a mortal man who dared to speak of creation without invoking gods, without invoking me.

I read the words slowly, the flickering light above me casting strange shadows over the lines. Life changes, the text claimed. It adapts. Not by divine will. Not by the decree of the gods. But by time, need, and chance.

I frowned. The mortal spoke of creatures shaping themselves, their forms shifting across generations, each one bending toward survival as a river bends toward the sea. As if the beasts of land and sky had molded themselves, inch by inch, until they fit the world instead of the world fitting them.

It was absurd. Heretical.

And yet...

I traced the lines of text, reading again. From one ancestor, all forms may arise. The strongest endure, the weak perish. Over time, their shapes refine, their nature alters.

My grip tightened on the book. I wondered if the author truly realized what he was suggesting. That the beings I had once ruled—creatures who had worshiped me, feared me, bled for me—had not been sculpted by divine hands, but by the indifferent passing of time? That their forms were not gifts of the gods but results of struggle, of endless suffering and survival?

I closed my eyes. I had seen civilizations rise and fall, watched men carve empires from sand and then crumble into dust, forgotten even by their own descendants. The weak had always perished; the strong had always thrived. It was nature, yes—but I had thought I was one of the ones who dictated it. That the wars fought in my name and the sacrifices left at my feet had determined who would inherit the world.

But what if the world had never needed me at all?

The thought was more chilling than any battlefield.

I snapped the book shut, tossing it onto the wooden desk with a thud. The mortal had been a fool, surely. He had seen a fragment of truth but mistaken it for the whole. The gods shaped the first of all things. That much was undeniable. But perhaps... once set into motion, life continued on its own, adjusting itself to a world that no longer called upon the divine.

That much became clearer to me with each book I read. People had moved away from gods and instead had chosen one they called God, and even He was questioned.

What had happened to the people?

My curiosity was so great that eventually I wandered away from the confines of the storage chamber and up the stairs, where I lurked in the shadows, watching.

Men moved through the grand halls, their voices carrying a carefully measured ease, their laughter polished and practiced. But it was their appearance that unsettled me most. These were warriors? These were leaders? Wrapped in layers of cloth so stiff and ornate, they walked as though burdened, not by weapons or armor, but by their own ridiculous fashions.

Their coats clung tightly to their torsos, their shoulders unnaturally stiff, as if they feared movement might ruin their elaborate attire. Their breeches did not extend to the ankles as they should, but left their lower legs wrapped in a strange, skin-tight fabric—too thin for armor, too fragile for battle. Their collars rose so high I wondered if they had been bound at the throat in some strange ritual. And atop their heads they wore tall, cylindrical structures—hollow towers of cloth and felt that served no purpose I could discern.

Where was the leather hardened by years of battle? The armor shaped by necessity? Where were the scars that marked victories and defeats?

A man passed by me, close enough that I could smell the sickly-sweet perfume clinging to his skin. He did not notice me at first—his gloved hand gestured as he spoke to his companion, laughter slipped easily from his lips. But something, some instinct long buried in mortal blood, must have warned him. He turned his head slightly, his eyes caught the dim light—and met mine.

He faltered. His step hesitated, and the words died on his tongue.

His gaze swept over me, taking in the worn leathers of my breeches—clothing I had found in a crate—the absence of finery, and the way I stood, not like them but like something else. Something older. Something dangerous. His lip curled ever so slightly in distaste, though whether it was for my appearance or the unease I inspired, I did not know.

I bared my teeth, just enough. A silent warning. A reminder.

He looked away first. Muttered something under his breath to his companion and walked on, stiff-backed and pointedly unaffected. But I had seen the truth flicker in his gaze—recognition, not of me, but of something long forgotten.

These men were civilized, adorned, caged. Their hands were soft, their bodies untouched by war, their strength rotted beneath layers of silk and propriety.

I had walked among kings and warriors. I had stood in halls of power where men spoke not in flowery pleasantries, but in the language of conquest. These men? These men had traded steel for etiquette, battle cries for empty words.

Had war itself been tamed, along with the beasts who once fought them? Or did men no longer fight with their own hands, relying instead on unseen weapons and distant slaughter?

I thought of the sword I had once wielded, the weight of it, the blood it had spilled. I thought of my people, the warriors who had stood at my side, their bodies bearing the stories of every battle they had survived.

A part of me sneered at these men, these preening peacocks, this age of delicate things.

But another part of me—the part that had led armies, that had felt the fire of survival in his veins—felt only grief.

The world had changed.

And perhaps... men had changed with it.

I was about to turn back to my hidden chamber when my blood began to hum in a way it had only ever done when Vaelora was close. She wasn't here, but her scent lingered in the air. Oblivious to the stares and cries of outrage, I moved forward through the masses of people scuttling out of my way.

With absolute certainty, I knew that Vaelora was nearby. That the time to reclaim her was now.

I was unprepared for the rain outside, falling as if the gods were weeping. Good, let them weep, because I was back. I would reclaim Vaelora and Orasis. I would obliterate this world of false splendor. The rain felt good as it plastered and washed my skin, as if it took pleasure in seeing me reborn.

My steps never faltered, not even when my eyes roamed the twisted streets before me that curved in unnatural patterns, hemmed in by towering stone structures unlike any I had ever known. They loomed with strange uniformity, their smooth facades lined with rows of glass, reflecting the city's dim glow like the unblinking eyes of a beast. Some rose higher than temples, standing without columns, without evidence that hardened hands of laborers once carved them from stone.

Men and women walked these streets, their bodies wrapped in thick layers of fabric, many hiding themselves beneath contraptions of stretched cloth and wooden ribs. Black canopies bobbed above them, rippling in the wind—unnatural, yet clearly meant to shield them from the rain. I had seen warriors carry shields into battle, their surfaces hardened by flame and hammer, meant to deflect spears and blades. But these? These flimsy covers seemed to serve only to keep the sky from touching them.

Cowards.

I strode past them, my bare feet slapped against the slick stone of the streets. Their gazes slid toward me and away just as quickly, their expressions flickered between confusion and discomfort. I was something they did not understand. Something they could not name. A man out of place, out of time.

Lightning cracked in the distance, illuminated the strange cityscape for a brief, blinding moment. The horse-drawn carriages rolling through the streets rattled against the stone, their wheels thinner, lighter than the ones I had once known. Hooves clattered, a sound almost familiar, but then—a deeper rumble, a monstrous growl from something unseen.

I turned sharply as a machine unlike anything I had ever witnessed rolled past—no horses, no beasts to pull it, only a great iron carriage with a flickering light inside. I stopped, staring as it moved on its own, an unnatural chariot, forged by men who no longer bent the world to their gods but to their own creation.

But I had no time to linger.

She was close.

I could feel Vaelora's presence pulsing through me, pulling me forward. Her essence whispered through my blood; it was an ache more potent than hunger, more demanding than thirst. She was near, and I had been without her for far too long.

I moved faster, ignoring the way mortals recoiled from my presence. Let them stare. Let them wonder. They did not matter.

Only she did.

Only Vaelora.